


maybe there's a word for it

by Febricant



Category: Zoolander (2001)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Ridiculousness, mild drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:12:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Febricant/pseuds/Febricant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Zoolander makes a comeback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe there's a word for it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radishwine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radishwine/gifts).



Derek wouldn’t have ever said, before today, that he’d have wished to go back to modelling.

For one thing, he’s older now, and likes to think that he’s wiser. Teachers are supposed to be wise, and he’s a teacher now, so of course that means he must be wiser. Definitely. But he can’t really account for his son.

Derek Junior wants to be a model. Derek isn’t sure what to do about that. His own father had said “Derek, I’m a coal miner, not a professional catwalk and catalogue modelling scout. Pass me a beer.” It hadn’t been very helpful.

“Daddy, we could do a photoshoot together!” Derek Junior’s Blue Steel is natural. Beautiful. Better than Derek’s is, now. His heart does something strange, like when he looks at Matilda when she’s angry. Or happy. Or... most of the time, except when she’s talking about mind reading, because that’s weird and strange and probably not something humans are supposed to be able to do.

“We could,” Derek agrees. Derek has a thought he hasn’t had in a while. The object of it has just gotten back from trekking in Nepal for eight months and hasn’t been in a magazine for a year, but nevertheless, he says, without too much conflict: “Hansel could shoot it.”

-

“Derek, could you maybe explain this in say, eight words or less?”

Matilda doesn’t look angry, which is good, but she does look confused, which is strange, because Matilda is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who goes all over the world writing about important things. She’s not confused a lot.

“I don’t know,” Derek tells her, because he really doesn’t. She’s holding a copy of Vogue, though. “I suppose I could explain that magazines are still in print, which people seem to think isn’t going to continue in the long run, but I think those people don’t understand fashion marketing.”

Matilda blinks at him. “No, Derek, why are you IN it? With Derek Junior? I thought we agreed that we’d wait until he was eighteen before he was allowed to be a model. He’s TEN.” Matilda’s been in China talking to people about forced labour. She looks amazing. Derek reaches out and fixes her hair. Matilda doesn’t bat his hand away, just closes her eyes and lets him. “Derek, what exactly did he say?” 

“He said ‘Daddy, we could do a photoshoot together!” Derek makes quotes with his fingers so she knows what parts are Derek Junior and what parts aren’t. It’s correct grammar, and Derek likes to try to practice what he teaches. “Then I said ‘Hansel could shoot it.”

Matilda sighs, but this time she’s smiling. It looks better. She’s always been more catalogue than catwalk, like the people grinning with a six pack of black turtlenecks. Derek has always secretly thought they looked much happier than anybody draped over a tiger wearing nothing but jewellery. He’s never modelled catalogue but he still has those bite marks. It had hurt a lot.

“So he’s back from his sabbatical, huh?”

“What’s a sab-”

Matilda grins at him. “Hansel’s back?”

Derek pouts at her. Hansel shouldn’t still be making him mad all the time. Derek is not happy about not being cool with Hansel. Hansel and Matilda, ideally, should get along. After Derek Junior, they’re his favourite people. “He didn’t call you? That’s rude.”

“I was busy,” Matilda reminds him. “Will you make sure you give him my blessing next time you see him? He likes it when you do that.”

Derek has had many, many years to relax into being confused. “Matilda, did you become a priest while you were at work? Are priests allowed to be married now? Are we Catholic, because I think you should tell me if we are.”

Matilda laughs again, and kisses him. “Do that, if you want to.”

“Do that?” Derek asks, but she’s already on her phone, saying “Cary, yeah, it’s fine, tell Vanity Fair I don’t want to be interviewed, I don’t like being on that end. Yes, Derek and I are still together. No, I don’t mind that Derek Junior wants to model. That’s it, okay? It’s not a story.”

Derek squints at her as she disappears into her home office. What’s not a story?

-

“Matilda says it’s not a story.” Derek hands Hansel back his pipe of special mushroom extracts from the clifftop crags of the Himalayas. The inside of his mouth tastes like moss now, and his tongue doesn’t seem to want to do what it’s supposed to, but this happens a lot around Hansel, so it’s no big deal.

Hansel inhales, his big, blue eyes sleepy behind his long hair. Derek thinks he’s allowed to think that Hansel should let the grey through without dyeing it. He’d look good, like somebody who lived in the woods and not in a loft with a half-pipe and a climbing wall.

“What’s not a story, amigo?” Hansel hands the pipe back. His pupils are really big. Derek feels a little like his hands might be huge, so he stares at them for a second, just to make sure they’re not.

“I don’t know. She saw the shoot you did, for Derek Junior. And me.” Derek puts his mouth where Hansel’s mouth was and breathes in the weird smoke. He exhales through his nose, because he has a sudden urge to see if he can. He can. “Am I a dragon?”

“We’re all dragons, man,” Hansel says, gesturing expansively. “Like, all of us, within us, have a dragon. I learned that scaling the side of Lhotse and like, this one moment when I almost died because my rope started fraying and shit, I was like, whoa, I could just fly! Like a dragon! But actually I just climbed the rest of the way without a rope. Like a mountain goat.”

“Okay,” Derek says. “Oh-” Derek leans in and presses his lips to Hansel’s- “she said to that if I wanted to.”

Hansel takes the pipe out of Derek’s probably-not-actually-huge hands and inhales the very last part of the smoke before the ember dies. “Cool,” he drawls. “Do you think Matilda means us? Working together again?”

Derek thinks Matilda means a lot of things and doesn’t always say what she means. “Do you think-”

“I think we should be naked,” Hansel says abruptly, pointing at him. “The mountain goats climb up vertical cliffs to lick salt off mountainsides,” Hansel continues, still pointing. “Isn’t that amazing? I was just thinking, you know, they do all that with only hooves. And we have _hands._ ”

Derek doesn’t really understand but his tongue is tingling and last time this happened, Hansel’s friend Magda from Estonia bit his nipple so hard he could still feel it when he and Matilda went home the next day. That was before Hansel went away last time and after he went away the time before. Derek looks around. “Where are your friends?”

Hansel smiles at him, and Derek is startled to see the fan of wrinkles around his eyes. Hansel should think about changing his skincare regime, probably, but Derek secretly likes it. “Home alone tonight,” Hansel says, leaning back on his pile of cushions and starting to unbutton his shirt.

“Oh.” Derek tries to remember if he’s ever seen Hansel alone before, but soon Hansel is shirtless, and Derek is distracted by the sight of some new tattoos, absorbed by the patterns until Hansel starts laughing and pulls Derek forward by his sleeve.

-

“Daddy,” Derek Junior says, eyes narrowed, “Why isn’t Mommy mad that we were in Vogue?”

“Did you think she would be mad?” Derek looks up from the book he’s reading about early adolescent development for DZSFKWCRG(AWTLTDOSGT) and watches as Derek Junior pokes at his gluten-free pancakes.

“She said she wanted me to wait until I was eighteen.” Derek Junior looks guilty, but that could also be because he’s growing into a new Look. “So I asked you instead.”

“I did my first catwalk show when I was sixteen,” Derek tells him, deciding not to be mad that Derek Junior thought he’d be easier to convince, “I had just moved to New York because Maury had scouted me at a union meeting for the Association Of New Jersey Miners. He said he was looking for rugged types but he ended up signing me. It was a big deal.”

“You were a miner?” Derek Junior looks curious now. Derek reaches out and ruffles his hair, because it’s a little too neat. Messy is in.

“I retired once before I retired for real. I went back to my roots. Your Grandpop didn’t think I was very good at it.”

“You weren’t,” Matilda says, sitting down at the table with a cup of black coffee, handing Derek a soy cappuccino with extra foam. “You’re much better at inspiring kids to follow their dreams.” She sips her coffee.

“I want to be a model,” Derek Junior tells her, face all screwed up like he’s trying to look older.

“Stop that,” Derek says, concerned, “you’ll start to age prematurely. Remember, we talked about skincare.”

“I think we should revise our family agreements.” Matilda puts her hand flat on the table. Derek puts his on top, fingers slipping between hers. Derek Junior puts his hand on last, a much smaller copy of Derek’s. “I agree that you can model if you want. On one condition. Dad has to go with you if you want to go out of New York.”

Derek and Derek Junior say “what?!” at exactly the same time.

“Do you agree?” Matilda raises her eyebrows at them. Derek thinks about how she also looks good with a few lines in her face, and then suddenly wonders if he’s ready to go back to the fashion industry.

“Who’ll run DZSFKWCRG(AWTLTDOSGT)?” Derek asks her, making the right brackets, thinking of all the kids he still teaches. He’ll have to be away a lot. He’ll have to go to _L.A._ Ugh.

“Lapsang is doing a pretty great job according to our last oversight inspection. He’s converted his masters’ in early childhood education,” Matilda says, “and I want to be at home a little more, spend some time with my favourite guys. I think my career might be okay if I spend a few more months a year in New York.”

“Okay,” Derek says, looking at his son’s grin. “I agree.”

-

Derek only starts to think maybe there’s something weird going on when he’s doing an interview with GQ and the reporter asks him about his big comeback.

“No,” Derek says, frowning, even though he tries not to do that, “I’m just going to go with my son. He’s starting his career, and his mother and I have agreed to let him.”

“But-” the reporter consults his notes, biting his lip, “this photoshoot is eight pictures of you and one of you holding your son up like an airplane. The tagline is _Derek Zoolander: Older, Wiser and Back In The Saddle._ You’re modelling the latest leather Jean Paul Gaultier line for the distinguished gentlemen.”

Derek, in all the strange goings-on since Hansel and Matilda got back and Derek stopped being a teacher, still hasn’t looked at it. He’s seen plenty of photos of himself and hadn’t wanted to see what the airbrushing had done to his hair, and besides, all the photos Hansel emailed him had all been mostly of Derek Junior. “Can I see that?” The reporter hands over last month’s Vogue. It has a handy post-it where the shoot is. He’s absolutely right. Derek isn’t sure if he’s angry or not, but he’s certainly not calm. “Excuse me,” he says, “I think I need to speak to someone else now.”

“So you’re not making a comeback after your big retirement after saving the Prime Minister of Malaysia?”

“I have to go,” Derek says. The reporter looks confused as Derek walks out, but that’s fine. Derek is better at focusing these days, and he has to talk to Hansel.

-

“Why are these all pictures of me?”

“It was a photoshoot,” Hansel says, polishing the lens of his giant camera before he aims it back at the pile of old shoes in the middle of his loft floor. “Do you think the light is good in here?”

“Move that reflector a little to the left,” Derek tells him, checking the angle of the setting sun in the big window. “Why didn’t you give them the pictures of Derek Junior?”

Hansel grimaces at him, hiding his face behind the camera. “I need you to come back to modelling, Derek. I- I miss working with you.”

“So you’re using my son to get me back in front of the camera? Hansel! I thought we were cool! This is...” he takes a deep breath. “This is messed up. Remember when we promised we wouldn’t act messed up towards each other?”

“Not that way,” Hansel says, putting the camera down on top of the shoes and pushing his hair out of his face. “Wow,” he mutters, “isn’t that like, a great visual metaphor?”

“Don’t change the subject!” Derek doesn’t yell very often, it ages the vocal chords, but sometimes he thinks he should yell more often. Yelling gets people’s attention.

Hansel crosses his arms and pouts at him, eyes very narrow. “I just thought- I thought if you were back in the game, you know, we could... do what we used to do.”

Derek thinks back to the other night, confused all over again. “We did that two weeks ago. Do you want to do it again? I could call Matilda, we could do it together. Derek Junior has a playdate.”

Hansel sighs, but his eyes get less narrow. “Derek, I have a confession to make.”

“Is everyone Catholic except me now?” Derek wonders aloud, and Hansel laughs, his perfect teeth very, very white. Derek, suddenly, feels a little better.

“Derek, I wasn’t trekking in the Himalayas for fun,” Hansel says. “Well, it was kind of fun, but I never retired, right? You know how all the big assassinations from the last century were all done by male models?”

Derek’s tongue feels thick for an entirely different reason from last time, heavy and dry in his mouth. “Are you- Hansel, if you’re trying to get Derek Junior-”

“No!” Hansel takes a step closer, “no, Derek, come on, I’ve been working for an organisation of people who want to put that right. We formed after you retired, is all. You really wanted to be a teacher, and I really wanted to like, do good shit. Remember?”

Derek has a policy of not messing up his own hair once he’s gotten it perfect in the morning, but sometimes, like right now, he can’t resist sinking his hands into it, just for the comforting reminder that it’s still there, he’s still real, and there is still style in the world. “So now male models do... reverse assassinations?”

Hansel looks like it’s only just occurred to him that there’s an opposite to assassination, but then he shakes his head. “No, we like... what does Matilda say?” Hansel thinks for a second, then makes quotes, so Derek will know that he’s quoting, “prevent the destruction of ethical production standards.”

Derek is caught on a single word here, and he’s not sure he’s heard it right. “Matilda?”

Hansel nods, grinning, like Derek’s finally got it, even though he absolutely hasn’t. “Matilda formed the organisation after we brought down Mugatu!”

“I have to go,” Derek says, for the second time that day.

“Derek, wait!” Hansel’s voice follows him as he scrambles over the empty half pipe, but Derek is running already, and he has too much to think about to coordinate a stop.

-

Matilda’s home office, like Derek’s dressing room, has always been off limits in the family agreements, but seeing as those have recently been revised, he feels he’s justified in bursting in. “You and Hansel do stuff without me?”

It’s not really what he’s been meaning to say, but all the things he’s formulated on his way over here go away when he sees her, so he just blurts out an approximation.

Matilda holds up a finger and says “well, push it through! I don’t want to bow to censorship just because The New Yorker doesn’t want to publish an editorial with the line “hell bent on the destruction of worker-organised union infrastructure,” then hangs up. She points at the other chair near her desk. “Sit down?”

Derek drops into it, then spends a little while arranging himself so his legs look good. He needs to present a good front, and weird pants-bunching and badly foreshortened thighs aren’t going to do him any favours. “You and Hansel do stuff without me.”

“Yes, we do,” Matilda says, “but Derek, you wanted to retire! We had a kid and you wanted to be a teacher, and I love you. I didn’t want to disrupt that, if you were happy.” She smiles. “Remember family agreement number one? That we’d be cool with each other doing cool stuff if they wanted to?”

Derek, upon making family agreement number one, had been thinking, honestly, more about parties than forming international organisations. “Yes, but I wish you’d told me.”

“You retired, Derek. After the Malaysian Prime Minister.” Matilda looks sad for a second, before she crosses her legs the other way, shifting in her seat in a very distracting way. “I didn’t want to push you back into the life, but if Derek Junior is going to start following in your footsteps, he’s going to need protection. I think you should do it, but I’ll do it if you don’t want to. I let Derek Junior start modelling because if he wants to do it badly enough to go behind my back I can’t stop him, but I want to know he’s at least doing it supervised. It’s a dangerous field.”

Derek sits back, deflated. He was all ready to be mad, but as usual, if he listens to Matilda for long enough, she says something smart and he realises she’s right. “The reporter today asked me about my comeback.”

Matilda laughs, her head thrown back and her hair loose, and Derek’s last bit of anger evaporates. “I told him it wasn’t a story, but I should have known he’d go for that angle.”

“Hansel’s pictures were all of me.” Derek scooches his chair a little closer to her, suddenly not all that concerned for how his legs look. He takes her hand, because it’s time to amend the family agreements again. “I think maybe he wants me to make a comeback.”

Matilda looks at their joined hands. “New family agreement?”

“I think we should all do things together. Instead of not doing things together.” Derek thinks he’s probably not saying it right, or that maybe there’s a word for three people hanging out together doing stuff instead of it being a weird triangle where two people do international spy stuff behind one’s back and then one of them has sex with the one whose back was turned the first time and is the long term partner of the third one. Maybe. Anyway, Matilda seems to get it.

“Agreed,” she says. “Derek Junior has a playdate on Friday.”

“That’s what I said!” Derek tells her. “Oh, I think he thinks I’m mad at him.”

“Are you?”

Derek thinks for a second. “I asked him to do the shoot for us,” he says. “So I guess not.”

Matilda smiles knowingly at him. He’s not sure exactly what she knows, but she knows a lot of stuff, so it’s probably good, if she’s smiling about it. “All his friends are away, aren’t they?”

Derek smiles back at her, less confused, and nods.

-

“Hey, Derek, I-” Hansel stops talking when he gets the door open all the way and sees that Matilda is there too. “Hey, M.”

Derek can’t help but notice that Hansel isn’t wearing a shirt, and that his hair is getting really long. He remembers the last shoot Hansel was in, for Yohji Yamamoto, all black and white and weird shapes, and thinks he looks even better in real life. Most people look better in magazines, but not Hansel. Or Matilda, who’s never been in a magazine except a few shots of her face and obviously her words. Derek does, but he can’t really look at his own face. Except for with mirrors. He’ll have to think about it. “Are you still home alone?” Derek asks Hansel, instead of thinking more. “Derek Junior has a playdate.”

“Uh, yeah,” Hansel says, opening the door a little more. “Look, if this is about the stuff I do with Matilda-”

“We thought we could all do stuff together,” Matilda interrupts. “We made a family agreement that we’d ask you.”

“What kind of stuff?” Hansel asks, looking back and forth between them.

“All kinds,” Derek tells him.

Hansel opens his mouth to say something, but instead he kind of grabs Derek and Matilda and drags them inside. The incense he’s burning smells a little like old grass, and within a minute or two, Derek starts to feel lightheaded.

That’s fine, that happens a lot around Hansel. Matilda also doesn’t seem to mind, if the way she’s taking off her bra is anything to go by, and then Derek is sliding a hand up her side and has one fist in Hansel’s hair and thinking it’s probably good that Hansel was home alone this month.

-

**_Derek Zoolander: Back On Top_ **

_“...Well Cary, I said I wasn’t planning on a comeback, and that was true,” Derek Zoolander tells me in the lobby of the abandoned hotel he and his artistic partner Hansel are shooting in today. “But then I reamalgamated my priory.”_

_I am not entirely sure what he means, but Zoolander, a little more distinguished in his bracket these days, with a hint of fashionable grey and some designer stubble, continues, saying “Hansel has been working consistently in a very violent industry for a decade, and I’ve been off the radar teaching at DZSFKWCRG(AWTLTDOSGT), so when my son asked to do a shoot, he was the natural choice. I guess I’ve caught the bug again!”_

_Zoolander’s smile is disarming, so much so that I only remembered, upon completion of the first draft of this article, that I had so many more questions to ask him._

_When I called to follow up, Zoolander’s long-term partner, journalist Matilda Jeffries, politely suggested I turn my efforts to larger trends in the industry, so for this edition of GQ, I have to conclude that Derek Zoolander and Hansel are likely set to be the new face of men’s fashion, proving that everything comes back into style if you wait long enough._

_When I asked for a final quote, I was actually referred to Hansel, whose parting words were simply “it’s so cool, man. Namaste!”_


End file.
